Early the next day we were on a new bus with Poncey, our driver so named due to his penchant for wearing chinos, obviously not a common pastime in New Zealand. The other passengers had been together a while and were of an average age of about 12 so it was pretty lucky Susie and I were only on the bus for two days as we didn't seem to have anything in common with them. Since we spent a fair few hours on the bus that day I'm going to do a quick rundown of what we saw.

The drive through Middle Earth became even more spectacular as we went further down the West Coast. We stopped at Lake Matheson, a mirror lake with the reflection of Mount Cook, Mount Tasman and the mountain ranges in it. Unfortunately the sky was a bit grey but the effect is still amazing, it's hard to believe water can be so still. Mount Cook was an impressive sight too, apparently it used to be 10 metres taller until the 1990's when a landslide took 10 metres off the summit. Its name in Maori means 'Cloud Piercer' too, which is pretty sweet. Overall in the region there are actually 20 mountains over 3000 metres high, and it makes for an inspiring backdrop - I could just picture hobbits and orcs running around in front of me. Lake Matheson has a large number of Paradise ducks in the area, a breed that mate for life. This makes for a sad story during hunting season as ducks are regularly widowed and the males will stay with the bodies of the dead females and starve to death because they won't leave them. Saddest story ever!

Along the way was also the Thunder Creek falls, a psychedelic experience if there ever was one. Basically you stare at the moving falls for about ten seconds then look to the side and the trees and rocks seem to wobble and sway, like you're looking at one of those magic eye pictures when drunk. Our next stop for the afternoon was to see the Hector's Dolphins, the smallest dolphins in the world. Poncey said that of all the trips he does to that particular beach he only sees the dolphins one in four times. We were extra lucky then to see some swimming in the waves and surfing through the cresting water. The downside to stopping at that beach? Sandflies, sent from Lucifer himself to give you the itchiest bites in the world. I spent a lot of the remainder of the afternoon squashing them against the window with my puzzle book. Not much further on from the dolphins we came to the Blue Pools. These consist of the most startling bright blue pools and streams full of trout that you can see through the crystal clear water. It almost looks like they have put food colouring into the water to make it this shade of aquamarine - and since we were there on a grey day it wasn't reflection from the sky, it was the actual colour of the water itself. Almost unbelievable. The last stop for the day was potentially the best stop of all, well in Susie's case anyway! This stop was the Geordie lake, Lake Hawea. When said in a Geordie accent it sounds much better, but just try to imagine it in your head - it's pretty hilarious, honest. Our overnight stop was Wanaka, where you could stay to do snowsports, but since I'd decided to do those in Queenstown I only stayed for one night. I truly believe that Wanaka can lay claim to having the best cinema in the world. As somewhat of an aficionado of the cinema I like to think I'm somewhat of an expert in these things, and when a cinema has a selection of sofas, bus seats and a car to sit in to watch Batman, as well as an interval where you can buy hot fresh cookies, makes it pretty hard to beat!

Finally it was time to get to Queenstown, with a quick stop off on the way at Puzzling world which was similar to a place I'd been in the Lakes so I didn't bother paying to go in, and an amazing fruit store with shedloads of tasters to try and some gorgeous pineapple which I bought in a fit of healthiness. Not quite the same as in Asia, but pretty good nonetheless. The landscape changed quite a bit as we went through the old gold mining areas, you could see where the land had been blasted to get to the ore, and it was a lot browner than other places, it's amazing how much we can affect the landscape in a matter of years. A quick stop off in Arrowtown, an old Gold mining town, and Queenstown was within reach!

Becca